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Christopher Hall, a regular contributor to The New York Times, recently chronicled his cheese tour through California’s dairy fields. Hall visited five farms from the Sonoma Marin Cheese Trail Map, sampling delectable cheeses, meeting the craftsmen, and learning about the land and animals from which the cheese is produced.

Two of the producers he visited gave him samples of cheese made from raw milk: Barinaga Ranch in Marshall, CA and the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company in Point Reyes Station, CA.

Barinaga Ranch sits on 100 acres of organic sheep pasture. Hall and the other visitors petted the sheep, toured the pristine creamery retrofitted with steel cargo containers, and sampled Txiki – an aged, raw milk cheese with a nutty taste that Ms. Barinaga has been making since 2009. Ms. Barinaga, who is of Basque descent, explained that the cheese was inspired by other semi-hard Basque cheeses similar to tommes but is unique, in part, because Basque-Americans do not have strong cheesemaking traditions. Rather, it is more typical for Basque immigrants to herd sheep raised for meat, not milk.

Hill’s final stop on the cheese tour was Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. The farm made its debut in 2000 with a creamy, pungent raw milk blue cheese. Point Reyes Original Blue cheese won the Best Cheese/Dairy Product award at the 2011 Fancy Food Show in Washington D.C. In addition to sampling the farm’s cheeses throughout a four-course lunch, Hall toured the farm and witnessed the birth of one of the farm’s new calves.

Hall’s account of the delectable cheeses made from raw milk at some of California’s most pristine dairy farms exemplifies how the raw milk movement is taking root in the foodie community. Read more about Hall’s journey through California’s dairy land here:

See the story: Five Stops on a California Cheese Trail

Realmilk.com is a project of the nutrition education non-profit, The Weston A. Price Foundation.

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David E. Gumpert, the author of widely acclaimed book The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights and popular blog The Complete Patient, will be releasing a new book this July about the escalating battle over food rights happening across the nation.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights takes the reader on a cross-country journey, from Maine to California, examining the question of whether Americans have the right to privately obtain the foods of our choice from local farmers without the interference of regulators.

Many consumers are becoming increasingly alarmed that the mass-produced foods available in grocery stores are excessively processed and contain harmful antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals. They are turning to local food producers for free range eggs, custom-slaughtered meat, and raw milk, among other products. However, government regulators claim that these foods carry severe health risks if they don’t meet certain standards – and are mounting intense, covert-like operations to crack down on private supply chains. Although food regulation is intended to protect consumers, there is cause for concern that large lobbying groups are pressuring the FDA and state governments to unfairly target and shut down small, family-owned farms.

Gumpert’s new book offers eye-opening tales about farmers getting hauled off in handcuffs and suburban moms worried about the legal ramifications of providing their children with nutritious, natural foods. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Food Rights is a must-read for those concerned about their health and free commerce.
Read more about the book and author David E. Gumpert here: http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/life_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_food_rights:paperback

The Campaign for Real Milk is a project of nutrition education non-profit, The Weston A. Price Foundation.